


The Remnants

by mollymauks



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, I'm Sorry, It starts bad and then it gets worse tbh, M/M, Molly-Typical Self harm, Temporary Character Death, but also kinda not?, i Thrive on this, listen you can't say 'do your worst' and expect me not to take that as the challenge it CLEARLY is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-27 16:55:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14430039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mollymauks/pseuds/mollymauks
Summary: Prompted for: Widomauk + 6: “Am I going to die?”, with the instruction to 'do my worst'. Which I did. Repeatedly.





	The Remnants

Molly’s hands were covered in blood. 

This was nothing new. He had come into this world covered in blood, and he’d likely leave it that way, too. He’d made his peace with that some time ago. 

Most nights he went to sleep with dried blood crusted on his purple skin, sticking to his clothes, stinging as he peeled it away. 

His power thrummed through his blood, demanding that he spill it.

 He was no stranger to the sight of blood on his hands. 

But how they shook now, violent as though there was a thunderstorm inside his bones. Once so dexterous, now they slipped and fumbled and fell. 

Crimson pushed between his fingers, like waves pushed between narrow rocks with each pulsing heartbeat of the ocean. But the ocean was dying. The heartbeat was slowing. The pulses were getting weaker and weaker, he could feel it. 

“No,” he whispered hoarsely, hands shaking still more as panic seized him, thrusting away the numbness of a few moments before. “No, no, no, no, no-” The repetition of that word became a rhythm, a song, and it rose to a mindless howl in the night as he pressed his hands harder against the tear in skin, as if he could will it closed once more. 

It started to rain. 

The freezing drops fell lightly from the sky, dropping onto his head, like friendly little kisses from above. 

He had loved the rain, once. When he had first been getting a sense of himself, getting his bearings in this strange new world it had been a comfort, a reminder that this earth was as vibrantly alive as he was. 

Now that rain felt like the echoes of a heaven that mourned a loss it already knew was coming, a loss that he was about to endure. 

The rain splattered down onto the wizard’s face and he steered feebly. His eyes fluttered, then opened. The piercing blue that looked like oceans Molly had never seen, but one day he’d promised himself he would, stared up into his own once more. 

Together, their eyes moved to the deep gash in the human’s chest, which Molly’s hands were still pressed down onto. As though that would help. 

Keep pressure on the wound. Someone had told him that, once, a hundred life times ago. Yasha, perhaps. That was what he was doing. That was what he had to do. Keep pressure on the wound, just keep pressure on the wound. It would be alright. He would be alright. They would be alright if he just, just kept pressure on the wound. 

Caleb choked weakly, a small dribble of blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. 

Impulse made Molly want to reach up and wipe it away but no, no. He had to, had to keep pressure, keep pressure on the, on the- 

“Mollymauk,” Caleb whispered, hoarsely. 

“Shh,” Molly whispered to him, pressing harder still, bracing himself up on his knees. “You shouldn’t- Shouldn’t talk now.” His tongue felt thick and feeble, the way it had those first few days when he’d crawled out of that grave, and he shook himself, refusing to let himself succumb to that past, that, that emptiness. 

“I doubt that there will be time for it later,” he wheezed back in reply. 

“Don’t say that,” Molly snapped, his voice both stronger in its fierceness, and weaker as it broke. 

A tear stung at the corner of his eye. He blinked. He hoped the rain hid it from Caleb as it slid down his cheek anyway. 

“Molly,” he whispered, voice trembling, and his eyes met Molly’s for a moment, for just as long as it took to breathe, “Am I going to die?” 

“No,” Molly snarled at him, fingers curling against the wound, blood leaking between them again, “No, you’re damn well not going to die on me, Caleb Widogast. Don’t you dare, don’t you, don’t you even think about it. You’re stuck with me whether you like it or not, you bastard, you promised me-” 

His voice broke and he swallowed down past the tight lump in his throat, giving him a tiny shake as he repeated, forcing himself to get the words out this time, no matter how they stung.

 “You promised me.” 

One corner of Caleb’s mouth twitched up in a faint smile and, from somewhere, he found the strength to raise one of his hands and gently cup Molly’s face. 

It started to slip a moment later, blood followed in the wake of his fingers, marking his cheek like war paint. Before it could fall, however, Molly took one of his hands away from the ruin of his partner’s chest and caught his fingers, holding them firm against his face. 

Caleb’s breathing was ragged and strained as he manged to get out, “And you...You made me a promise, too, Mollymauk. Do you remember?” 

“I always keep my promises,” he choked out, squeezing Caleb’s hand.

“No,” Caleb rasped, shaking his head faintly. He gave another sad little smile and sad, “You promised me...That you would never...Never lie to me. Remember?” 

Tears were falling from Molly’s eyes thick and fast now, blurring with the rain as he trembled. “I never did,” he choked thickly, “I never lied to you.” 

Caleb smiled, still more sadly, his fingers flexing gently against Molly’s cheek as he whispered, “Then you are lying...To yourself.” 

Molly choked on a fresh wave of tears, forcing them back as he squeezed Caleb’s hand more tightly than life itself, “It’s going to be fine,” he whispered, “It’s all going to be fine, I promise, I promise. I’ll fix it. I’ll fix it. I’ll fix this, I promise, I promise, I-” 

“Mollymauk,” Caleb interrupted, quietly, halting his terrified babbling. “You only need to promise me one thing in this moment.” 

“Anything,” he breathed, adjusting his grip on Caleb’s hand, still holding it against his cheek.

 The warmth was already starting to leave it. 

“Anything you want, darling.” 

“Stay with me,” Caleb rasped to him, “Promise you will stay with me until...Until the end.” 

“Caleb-” Molly gasped, losing the battle against his own grief and allowing it to spill from him once more. 

“That will be enough,” Caleb whispered, his eyes fluttering closed once more, “That will be everything.” 

“No!” Molly screamed as Caleb’s chest stilled. 

He dropped the hand he’d had holding Caleb’s against his cheek and it fell limply to the mud they were both sprawled in. 

He shook him, hopelessly, repeating his name, over and over and over again, like a child that could not comprehend life, or loss, like a child that believed that if he willed something hard enough, reality would reshape itself to suit his needs. 

He could no longer tell the rain from the tears upon his face. Both blinded him, as he clutched at the body of the man he loved, the man he would not lose. Not like this. Not like this. 

Pressure. Pressure. Some impulse in the back of his mind overrode everything, overrode grief, overrode sense, overrode his very existence. It took control of him, like a marionette that had finally found the right strings to pull to make him act. He had to, had to put pressure on the wound. That was why- He had stopped. He had to keep doing that, had to keep doing that until Jester got here, had to- 

The next thing he was aware of were hands, hands larger and rougher than Caleb’s, but still surprisingly gentle, for all their size, taking him by the shoulders. 

“Molly.” 

His own voice felt foreign in his ears, as though he had become numb even to himself in this moment. The only word there was, the only word he needed was the only one on his lips, the one he repeated over and over again like a heartbeat. 

Caleb. 

Caleb.

Caleb. 

“Molly,” the voice repeated, more urgently this time. 

Some distant part of his mind stirred this time. Yasha, it said, this was Yasha. 

He swayed slightly on the spot, but otherwise made no effort to answer. 

“Molly, come on,” the voice was as rough but oddly gentle as the hands that were still on his shoulders. 

“Caleb,” he mumbled, thickly, and then, with great effort, “No.” 

“I know,” the voice that belonged to Yasha said, “I know, but just, just come with me, just for a moment.” 

“Caleb,” he said again, shaking his head this time, because she clearly didn’t understand. “Caleb,” he gripped him more tightly, to emphasise his point. 

“Molly,” Yasha whispered, even her strong, sure voice breaking just a little as she squeezed at his shoulder, “Molly, there’s nothing you can do.” 

There was, there was and he was damn well doing it. He’d made a promise. He’d made a promise that he wouldn’t leave. He’d made a damn promise. 

“No,” he said again, shaking his head more vigorously and trying to pull away from her. 

“You can’t help him now,” Yasha breathed. “I’m sorry, Molly, I’m sorry, but he’s-” 

“No,” he said again, no more loudly, or aggressively than he had done a moment before, but he interrupted her all the same. He did not want to hear that word. He would not hear that word. 

“I’m sorry,” Yasha whispered again, and then her arms moved down and wrapped around his chest, almost like an embrace, until she began to pull him away, and then he understood just what she was sorry for. 

“No!” he screamed again, writhing furiously in her grasp, but she was far stronger than him, and always had been, and she lifted him easily away. “No!” Molly howled again, clawing furiously at the air, as though he could gain purchase on it and drag himself back to Caleb. He had to get back to Caleb, he had to get back to him, he had to- 

Yasha began to step away from Caleb, taking him with her, and he redoubled his efforts, cursing and snarling at her in Infernal, digging his claws deeply into her flesh until he drew blood he couldn’t see from the tears and the rage that blinded him, but that he could feel gushing over his already crimson hands. 

“I promised him,” he screamed at her, straining against her hold, against her calm, against the stoic, solid way she carried him away, as though the whole fucking world hadn’t just collapsed in on itself, forgetting to take him with it. 

“I promised him,” he wheezed, the grief snuffing out his rage like a candle before a hurricane, as Yasha lowered them both down to the ground and held him, just held him, rocking him gently like a child as he sobbed in her arms and whispered over and over and over again, in every language he knew, “I promised him.” 

Jester found them first. She had no doubt seen the blood it looked like Molly had drowned in and scampered over, looking concerned. 

“Are you hurt?” she asked him, kneeling down in front of him. 

Yasha released him just slightly, wanting to allow Jester to tend to him, and that was all he needed for clarity to return to him. 

Springing up so suddenly he startled both women, he seized Jester’s wrist and began to tug her back to the road. How he knew where he was going, how he had any idea which direction to lead her in, he had no idea, but he found Caleb without any difficulty at all, lying exactly where he had left him. 

“Help,” he breathed imploringly to Jester, tugging on her arm and trying to drag her closer as she stood still as though she’d been recently turned to stone by the sight of Caleb. “Help,” he repeated, trying to drag her closer as she stubbornly refused to move. 

Molly didn’t understand. She was the cleric, she was their cleric, this was what she had to do, this was her job, this was his only hope, she had to, she had to. 

“Molly-” she whispered, her voice thick with emotion, Yasha standing like a shadow just behind her, watching with her mismatched eyes full of a heavy, haunted sadness Molly had never seen in them before. 

He wanted to scream at her. He wanted to scream at both of them. He needed them. Caleb needed them and they were just, just standing there, staring at him like ghosts at a wake, present but helpless. 

“Help,” he repeated, more urgently, trying, once again, to pull her nearer. “Please.” 

“Molly,” she said again, voice breaking. She freed her wrist from his grasp and held his hand instead, squeezing tight as tears continued to roll down her cheeks. “Molly I, I can’t, I-” 

“Help him!” Molly shouted at her, tearing his hand from hers. He didn’t want her to hold his hand, he didn’t want her to hold him, he just wanted her to do her goddamn job because this wasn’t it, this couldn’t be it, she had to, she had to- 

Yasha stepped forwards as Molly moved towards Jester. She placed a hand on his shoulder and looked down into his eyes, her own seemingly full of all the sorrow the world had ever known. 

“Mollymauk-” she began, so gently that it shattered him. 

He shook his head, words utterly failing him, “I promised him,” he signed to her, “I keep my promises.” 

She shook her head, as though reading his mind, his heart, and knowing just what he planned, reaching for his hand and holding it. 

He pulled it back to sign to her, “Stay with him?” 

She stared at him long and hard, the only sound between them the rain that still lashed their bodies. Then, finally, she nodded. 

Without another look, or thought, Molly had bounded to the edge of the camp and swung himself up onto his horse. He turned it sharply, and galloped back towards Zadash at a near frightening pace, as though trying to race the very winds themselves.  

An hour later, the echoing crash of a door melded with the thunder that had begun as he had ridden. Lightning flashed, illuminating his silhouette in the doorway, like a true demon that had clawed itself now from hell, as well as the grave. 

The sound made the tabaxi sitting at the small desk to jump. There was the tinkle of shattering glass as a vial slipped from her hands. She opened her mouth to shout for help, but Molly had already strode into the room and, recognising his face gilded by the soft candlelight she’d been working by, she relaxed slightly. 

She opened her mouth to greet him, but he interrupted her, “Where is she?” 

His voice was raw and hoarse, as though his throat had been dragged across hot coals, but he paid it no mind. 

“Lucien?” she repeated, blankly, a look of concern spreading across her features. 

The name that once would have felt like a lash across his back, splitting him open, now barely registered against the grief that was driving him to the very edge of madness. 

“The woman that performed the ritual on me,” he said, struggling to keep the growl from his words, “The night I died and you buried me and left me for dead, that woman, you remember?” The tabaxi nodded tremulously, eyes wide, staring at Molly as though he had gone mad. Perhaps he had. He found he didn’t care very much. “Where is she?” 

“Lucien-” Cree began. 

Without breaking eye contact, Molly drew one of his swords across his back and let it flare with radiant power. 

As his blood dripped onto her floor, he held the point against Cree’s throat. 

“Where is she?” he repeated again, the words as calm and dead as any he had ever uttered, “I won’t ask again. But I’m not leaving here until you tell me. You understand?” 

**** 

The room smelled like blood. 

In hindsight, he wasn’t sure what he’d else expected. It was dark, and dank. The sound of a rat skittering across the floor in search of crumbs was the only sound until he pushed the door open. 

The woman hunched over the table didn’t so much as blink. 

“I thought you’d come,” she said. Her voice was soft and rasping, like the tip of a blade being drawn across old bones. It seemed to come to him from beyond the grave. He shivered. 

“Good,” he said, abruptly, “Then you know why I’m here, I don’t have to waste time explaining.” 

“Perhaps you should,” she said, still not looking up at him, “I find it the best way to ensure there are no misunderstandings.” 

She was writing, he saw, her quill scratching against a piece of weathered parchment. The familiarity of the sight made the remnants of his heart tighten painfully in his hollow chest. 

“If you don’t put down that fucking quill and come with right now, I will kill you where you sit,” Molly spat at her, in Infernal, activating one of his swords and letting its radiant glow fill the black room around them. 

That made her pause. Slowly, deliberately, she laid down her quill, then turned to look at him. She appeared middle-aged, strikingly beautiful, with raven-black hair, and green eyes that were slitted like a snake’s. 

“You would try,” she said, in that voice that made his skin crawl, that he was sure would haunt his nightmares if he lived past tonight. “And you would fail. And then what?” 

“And then I would be with him again,” Molly said, fighting not to let his grief bleed into his words, but failing all the same. 

She got to her feet. She was taller than him, her body slender and sinuous, and she moved with a serpentine grace as she walked towards him, completely disregarding the drawn sword in his hand. 

She touched a finger to his chest, then flattened her palm against it, right over his heart. It beat now, faster, and more violently than it had ever done. 

“That’s right,” he whispered to her, “I’m alive. I’m here. I know what power you wield, so don’t try and bullshit me. I want you to bring him back, truly bring him back, not as some undead monster, but as him, and I know that you can do it.” 

She met his eyes, and stared at him long and hard. 

“And what will you give me in return?” she asked, voice cool and calm as she cocked her head to one side, staring at him with those serpent’s eyes, unblinking. 

“Anything,” he said, without hesitation. 

She laughed softly, the sound like two rocks clacking against one another. It made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. This woman was old, far older than she appeared, and she was terrible, perhaps more-so than anything else. In any other moment, under any other circumstances, she would have terrified him, and he would have run from her.

 But her power, her existence, relied upon people like him, and upon the desperation that love drove people to, the love that drove people to the kind of singular madness that was the only force powerful enough in the world to bring them to her. 

“Be careful what you say within these walls, boy,” she told him, “Words have power, here, and you may find yourself ensnared by a bargain that it is worse than death to break. Choose your words with more caution, and answer me again. What will you give me, if I grant you this boon, and return him to you?” 

“Anything,” he said, yet again, without any more hesitation than he had answered her with the first time. 

She laughed softly again. 

His hand began to tremble, “I have gold, gems, jewels, enchanted objects beyond price. You can take whatever you want from me, I don’t care.” 

“So hasty to bargain away all that you have, and all that you are,” she said, silkily cocking her head to one side and smiling at him. Her tongue was forked. “What is your great rush, Mollymauk Tealeaf? There is time.” 

“And every minute of it I spend in a world without him in it is wasted,” he shot back with a low snarl. “What do you want? My blood? My swords? My service? My fucking soul? You can have it. You can have anything. Is that plain enough for you? Are those words powerful enough for you? You can have anything you damn well want from me if you bring him back to me, you can-” 

She moved so fast his eyes couldn’t follow it. Her fingers closed tightly around his wrist, her nails piercing him. Pain burst through him, beginning at the spot where she touched him and exploding through his body like a crack of lightning. 

He only had time to register the tiny snake etched onto his wrist like a brand before her grip on him tightened even more and then he knew nothing but darkness. 

His lungs expanded gratefully with cold air, and the rain was suddenly crashing down against his body once more, each frozen droplet reminding him with agonising clarity that he was alive. Alive. When Caleb was not. 

Blinking and hearing the sound of a sword being drawn from its sheath, he shook his head and forced himself to take in his surroundings. He was back. Back on that lonely little rode where the unthinkable had happened, where he was about to witness the impossible. 

Caleb still lay, exactly where he had left him, blood starting to dry on his coat, Yasha standing over him. It was she who had drawn her sword. 

“It’s okay, Yash,” he whispered hoarsely, staggering forwards. 

She did not sheathe her blade, and she did not tear her eyes from the woman who was standing just behind him, having brought them here with her magic, no doubt. 

“Who are you?” Yasha demanded of the woman. 

She made no answer. 

Yasha took a step forward, but Molly planted himself between her and Caleb. 

“Do it,” he said, not looking away from his friend’s face. 

“What have you done?” she whispered to him, growing horror flooding her face. 

“What I had to,” he replied. 

Then he turned away from her and ran to Caleb, falling into the mud beside him. 

Tenderly, as though he were a baby bird that had fallen from its nest, Molly gently lifted him, cradling him against his body. He was cold and still, and there was a strange sort of peace that had settled over his face in death. 

Molly closed his eyes, unable to bear looking at him a moment longer while he was like this. 

“Please,” he whispered to the woman behind him, head still bowed over Caleb, tears escaping from beneath his eyelids once more. 

He didn’t even know her name. He found that he didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything but the man he held in his arms. 

She stepped closer, and he heard her kneel down beside them. Molly forced himself to open his eyes and watch her as she placed her hands on Caleb’s ravaged chest. 

Then she began to chant softly under her breath in Celestial. Molly’s breath caught in his throat. He felt Yasha freeze behind them, staring at the ritual that was taking place. 

Swallowing thickly, he joined in her chanting. His Celestial was broken at best, despite Yasha’s best teaching, but the melody drew him in, and the warmth and emotion and power that radiated from the spell around them carried him. 

After almost an hour, in which Molly’s knees were numb, and his throat was raw, the woman suddenly stopped singing. 

He still cradled Caleb in his arms, still and cold as he had ever been. 

He turned, snarling, tears of mingled agony and fury splashing from his eyes. 

But the woman spoke before he could. “Never forget the debt that you owe me, Mollymauk Tealeaf,” she told him, gravely. 

Before he could say another word, she vanished. 

He was distracted from the agonised howl that was building in his throat at the certainty that his only, last, dreadful hope had gone, when he heard Caleb cough hoarsely in his arms, and the rest of the world vanished in a moment. 

“Caleb,” he rasped, tears welling again in his eyes, but this time tears of relief and joy, as he felt the wizard’s thin chest rising and falling against him once more. He placed a hand over his chest and felt his heart beating, strong and reassuring, beneath. “Caleb,” he whispered again, reverent as any prayer he had ever made to his beloved Moonweaver. 

Caleb stirred and Molly held him, gently stroking a hand through his hair the way he knew he liked, leaning down and pressing a soft kiss to his forehead, a soft, hysterical laugh bursting from him. 

The wizard opened his eyes, fogged and confused as he blinked and shuffled in Molly’s harms. 

“Enough of that, now, darling,” Molly told him through another laugh that bubbled up from his chest, the broad smile spreading across his chest as those bright blue eyes pierced him again, a sight he’d thought he’d never see again while life remained to him. “You need your rest, you know.” 

Caleb seemed to come to the same thought as it left Molly’s lips, and slumped in his arms once more, exhausted. His eyes focused on Molly again as Molly laid a tender, clawed hand on his cheek. It was still covered in his blood. Molly trembled, but forced himself to smile, not thinking of that. 

Caleb gazed up at him, blinking himself back to consciousness, still. 

When at last he was able to speak, he whispered, hoarsely, “Who...Are you?” 

******

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! 
> 
> If there's anything left of you, please consider screaming like an enraged banshee in my direction in the comments.


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